Voice Print – December 2017

Facilitated By: Maggie Strudwick

Maggie Strudwick ran an excellent session for us on the VoicePrint communications profiling tool. The underlying premise is that our VoicePrint is as unique as our fingerprint and understanding how we use our voice can improve the way we use “talk” in our work and in our teams.

Maggie outlined the instrument, designed and developed by Alan Robertson, which can be used as a personal diagnostic or combined with a 360 degree questionnaire and provides insights into where our communications succeed or fail. She then focussed in on the nine key voices that Robertson has identified, which can be grouped under 3 headings – Exploring, Positioning and Controlling. We all use all the voices to various extents, and each can be useful in different situations, depending on the outcome we want. It’s when different participants in a conversation mismatch their voices that communication difficulties can arise – you can imagine the impact if someone thinks they are exploring and others are receiving that as controlling. As with all our strengths, they can be overplayed.

Maggie provided practical examples of the different voices and we had fun identifying them – or trying to! We enjoyed our usual level of debate as to the application of the concepts and the specific diagnostic.